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   lawmakers. “How short sighted and stupid can you possibly be,” he   
   wrote. Fairshake’s donations to unseat Senator Brown in Ohio were,   
   Conway said, a “slap in the face” to Schumer. “NOT ONE PERSON BOTHERED   
   TO GIVE ME A HEADS UP THAT YOU WERE DOINIG THIS,” he continued, proving   
   that billionaires also ignore spell-check. “We have two factions: a   
   moderate faction and a Donald Trump faction (Brian and Marc). . . . I   
   have been working too long with people who [do] not share common values   
   and that is unacceptable.” He went on, “Because of your selfish hidden   
   agendas it is time for us to separate. . . . I will I no longer   
   compromise myself by associating or helping.”   
      
   Republican leaders began making parallel complaints. When Andreessen   
   and crypto executives joined a Republican congressional retreat in   
   Jackson Hole this past summer, attendees expressed fury over the fact   
   that Fairshake had spent money on ads supporting the Democratic   
   candidates in the Arizona and Michigan Senate races—contests that might   
   well decide which party takes control of the chamber.   
      
   Whether or not Lehane’s coalition holds together, one thing is clear:   
   Silicon Valley has become part of a tradition that stretches back to   
   Boss Tweed. Tech has learned how to politick. To paraphrase Ronald   
   Reagan, the industry is mastering the world’s second-oldest profession   
   by studying the techniques of the first. Tech’s money and emerging   
   political savvy mean that its interests—crypto, the sharing economy,   
   ungoverned social media—are here to stay. For the S.E.C., Silicon   
   Valley’s turn has sparked something close to terror. “If crypto wins,   
   you’re going to see financial firms suddenly saying their products are   
   on the blockchain, and they’ll drive billions through that loophole,”   
   the official familiar with the S.E.C.’s thinking told me. “We saw this   
   happen with savings and loans, and with mortgage derivatives, and with   
   regional banks, and it always ends badly. Something’s going to blow up,   
   and a lot of people are going to get hurt.” Even the people who have   
   worked on Lehane’s campaign aren’t certain that they’re doing the right   
   thing. “Yeah, the Valley is more sophisticated now, but that doesn’t   
   mean it’s good for the public,” the Coinbase staffer told me. “The   
   public gives zero shits if crypto is a security or a commodity. What’s   
   really important to them—How do I protect myself? How do I know which   
   coin is safe?—that’s not part of the conversation. This isn’t   
   enlightened debate and discussion. This is about using money to be a   
   bully, so everyone knows you’re the scariest ones on the playground.”   
      
   There are two ways of looking at Silicon Valley’s new political   
   sophistication. The first is that it is a manifestation of how a modern   
   democracy is supposed to work. As Peter Ragone, the prominent Democrat   
   consultant, put it, “I’d rather have people getting involved and   
   getting their hands dirty—being willing to talk about regulation and   
   saying their opinions in public—than a situation like the past, where   
   all the rich guys cut deals in back rooms.” Many of America’s proudest   
   political battles—the fights for marriage equality, universal suffrage,   
   environmental protections—succeeded only because they were backed by   
   supporters with deep pockets and fierce tenacity, advantages that the   
   tech industry also has. And no amount of money can decide an election   
   unless the voters agree with the agenda. “You don’t get to take office   
   unless you have a majority, or close to a majority, of people agreeing   
   with you, no matter how rich you are,” Ragone said. In this view, tech-   
   industry proponents, like many Americans, have simply learned to   
   advocate for a cause, build a coalition, and make sure that their   
   voices are heard.   
      
   The other way of viewing the Valley’s political exertions is as a   
   symptom of systemic rot—as proof that American governance and   
   legislation have become so perverted by money that it is nearly   
   impossible for people other than billionaires to further their agendas.   
   This dynamic can be seen as particularly dangerous given that the U.S.   
   economy has dumped lavish riches on a tiny group of disaffected,   
   defiantly unaccountable technologists. As many critics of Silicon   
   Valley see it, today’s startup founders and venture capitalists are,   
   like the nouveaux riches of previous eras, using their wealth for   
   selfish aims. In doing so, they have revealed themselves to be as   
   ruthless as the robber barons and industrial tyrants of a century   
   ago—not coincidentally, the last time that income inequality was as   
   extreme as it is today.   
      
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   Lehane, for his part, acknowledges that our political system is flawed,   
   but he believes he’s making it better. He’s been successful, he told   
   me, only because he’s worked with so many talented colleagues devoted   
   to building a better, fairer world. “For me, it’s always been about   
   ‘Can you give the little guy a much bigger knife to cut a much bigger   
   piece of the economic pie?’ ” he said. As he sees it, Airbnb fought   
   large hotel chains so that teachers and nurses could earn extra money   
   by renting out their empty bedrooms. Coinbase has given people a way to   
   sidestep the big banks and their onerous fees. Many entrenched   
   industries have used politics to benefit themselves at the public’s   
   cost. It’s only fair, Lehane argues, to let Internet upstarts fight for   
   their agenda; he says his advocacy is rooted in a passionate belief   
   that tech, if regulated wisely, can help the powerless get their share.   
      
   Of course, this mission has also made Lehane very wealthy. (He declined   
   to disclose precisely how wealthy.) “But, at the risk of being   
   incredibly hubristic, there’s a lot of places I could have gone to make   
   money,” he said. What motivates him, he added, is a righteous battle.   
   His X profile features a photograph of him in boxing gloves, grimacing   
   mid-punch.   
      
   In August, OpenAI, the artificial-intelligence giant, announced that it   
   had hired Lehane as its vice-president of global affairs. Unlike the   
   battles that he’s fought at Airbnb and Coinbase, where the ideological   
   lines of combat have been easy to define, the political fights over   
   artificial intelligence are murkier and more nascent. There are   
   numerous stakeholders with competing interests within the tech industry   
   itself. Marc Andreessen, for one, has called for little to no   
   additional regulation of underlying A.I. technologies, because, he   
   wrote in a jeremiad last year, hampering the development of technology   
   that might benefit humanity “is a form of murder.” In other words, “any   
   deceleration of AI will cost lives.” He left it unsaid that creating   
   regulations would also likely make it more difficult for him and other   
   venture capitalists to find fast-growing companies to invest in,   
   thereby denying them profits.   
      
   On the opposing side is a contingent of A.I. engineers who believe that   
   their creations may soon become powerful enough to exterminate most of   
   humanity. Regulation, therefore, is urgently needed to insure that only   
   the most enlightened technologists can practice this mysterious   
   alchemy. The technologists pushing these arguments, inevitably, place   
   themselves among those enlightened few, and their “more responsible”   
   visions of A.I. development often align with the business plans of   
   their own startups.   
      
   Somewhere in the middle is Lehane and OpenAI. The company made an   
      
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